A Brief Response to Brooker et al.'s Comment

Ricklefs,

doi:10.2307/27735907

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Lortie & Reid, ), biological soil crusts or microbial communities (Maestre et al , 2009 a ). However, how many species within a community depend on nurses or, in other words, what the importance is of positive plant–plant interactions for the maintenance of plant diversity, and over what spatio‐temporal scales these interactions are important, is largely unknown (see discussion on this topic in Ricklefs, , ; Brooker et al , ). Empirical studies (e.g.…”

Section: Relative Importance Of Plant–plant Interactions For Communitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving forward on facilitation research: response to changing environments and effects on the diversity, functioning and evolution of plant communities

2014

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Once seen as anomalous, facilitative interactions among plants and their importance for community structure and functioning are now widely recognized. The growing body of modelling, descriptive and experimental studies on facilitation covers a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic systems throughout the globe. However, the lack of a general body of theory linking facilitation among different types of organisms and biomes and their responses to environmental changes prevents further advances in our knowledge regarding the evolutionary and ecological implications of facilitation in plant communities. Moreover, insights gathered from alternative lines of inquiry may substantially improve our understanding of facilitation, but these have been largely neglected thus far.Despite over 15 years of research and debate on this topic, there is no consensus on the degree to which plant-plant interactions change predictably along environmental gradients (i.e. the stressgradient hypothesis), and this hinders our ability to predict how plant-plant interactions may affect the response of plant communities to ongoing global environmental change. The existing controversies regarding the response of plant-plant interactions across environmental gradients can be reconciled when clearly considering and determining the species-specificity of the response, the functional or individual stress type, and the scale of interest (pairwise interactions or community-level response). Here, we introduce a theoretical framework to do this, supported by multiple lines of empirical evidence. We also discuss current gaps in our knowledge regarding how plant-plant interactions change along environmental gradients. These include the existence of thresholds in the amount of species-specific stress that a benefactor can alleviate, the linearity or non-linearity of the response of pairwise interactions across distance from the ecological optimum of the beneficiary, and the need to explore further how frequent interactions among multiple species are and how they change across different environments. We review the latest advances in these topics and provide new approaches to fill current gaps in our knowledge. We also apply our theoretical framework to advance our knowledge on the evolutionary aspects of plant facilitation, and the relative importance of facilitation, in comparison with other ecological processes, for maintaining ecosystem structure, functioning and dynamics. We build links between these topics and related fields, such as ecological restoration, woody encroachment, invasion ecology, ecological modelling and biodiversity-ecosystem-functioning relationships. By identifying commonalities and insights from alternative lines of research, we further advance our understanding of facilitation and provide testable hypotheses regarding the role of (positive) biotic interactions in the maintenance of biodiversity and the response of ecological communities to ongoing environmental changes. Europe PMC Funders Group

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Section: Relative Importance Of Plant–plant Interactions For Communitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving forward on facilitation research: response to changing environments and effects on the diversity, functioning and evolution of plant communities

2014

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“…In this context, it has been proposed that community ecology should be rebuilt around two main questions: namely, how the fundamental niche is governed by functional traits along environmental gradients and how the interaction between traits and fundamental niches shape the realised niche (McGill et al 2006). According to Ricklefs (2008Ricklefs ( , 2009, the primary entities of community ecology are not species but populations, and we need to understand the regional drivers of species distributions to understand the local coexistence of species. According to Ricklefs (2008Ricklefs ( , 2009, the primary entities of community ecology are not species but populations, and we need to understand the regional drivers of species distributions to understand the local coexistence of species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community ecology: diversity and dynamics over time

Rull¹

2012

Community Ecology

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This paper aims to show the relevance of past ecological records, at centennial to millennial timescales, for community ecological principles and theory, mainly in relation to temporal dynamics and the origin of present-day community patterns. The underlying assumption is that ecological time is a continuum and the ecological understanding of the present biosphere needs inputs from multilevel timescales. In particular, the so-called Q-time, embracing the Quaternary (the last 2.6 million years), is proposed as a key time period to understand present-day patterns and the underlying causal processes, as for example the latitudinal diversity gradient, the relationship between species richness and stability, the equilibrium/non-equilibrium conditions between communities and the environment, the main trends and clues on the origin of present-day species and the communities they form, the community succession under changing environmental conditions, or the nature (individual vs collective) of such biotic responses, among others. In this temporal context, neoecological studies and modeling, based on short-term evidence and calibration/validation data sets, are viewed as an important source for hypotheses to be tested with long-term ecological (i.e., palaeoecological) and molecular phylogenetic studies. The considerations around these topics provide valuable insights to address the potential future state of modern communities under the predicted global change, which would be useful to propose suitable conservation strategies. It is hoped that this paper will promote constructive discussions leading to a more close collaboration between neoecologists and palaeoecologists, in the way towards the natural convergence of both into one single, time-independent, discipline as is (or should be) ecology. As this paper has been conceived for both neo-and palaeoecologists, the message is twofold: to neoecologists, care about time; to palaeoecologists, care about ecology.

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A Brief Response to Brooker et al.'s Comment

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Moving forward on facilitation research: response to changing environments and effects on the diversity, functioning and evolution of plant communities

Moving forward on facilitation research: response to changing environments and effects on the diversity, functioning and evolution of plant communities

Community ecology: diversity and dynamics over time

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